Eight years and one major-label deal after "Closer," Goapele falls back upon the cottage industry that made her famous.

Brother Namane Mohlabane (foreground) and Theo Rodrigues have crafted a well-oiled marketing machine that has allowed the singer to prosper outside the major-label apparatus.

Details: Event Info
Goapele headlines the East Bay Express Best of the East Bay
Party on Friday, Aug. 7, at the Oakland Musuem of California (1000 Oak
St.). 5 p.m.-midnight, free. EastBayExpress.wordpresss.com

Seven years ago, Goapele Mohlabane would flit in and out of hip-hop
shows like a Queen Cleopatra. She was beautiful in a striking and
unconventional way: long and narrow, with wiry braids and pristine
facial symmetry. She also stood right on the cusp of fame, having sold
several thousand units of her debut album, Closer, and become an
It girl in local periodicals. Goapele had even broken the glass ceiling
at 106 KMEL, appearing on the Chuy Gomez morning show and garnering
frequent radio play at a time when Bay Area artists were all but
shunned by the popular hip-hop station. Still a couple of years away
from inking a deal with Sony, the young singer had an extremely
well-put-together cottage industry backing her up.

Goapele's success owes partly to her mysterious, Delphic persona and
partly to an unusual vocal style that blends African influences with
American R&B. But much of it can be credited to a homegrown
business model that benefitted her more than her major-label deal with
Sony, which ended in 2006. Goapele's three-person family label,
Skyblaze Recordings, has remained thoroughly intact and is poised to
release the singer's third album in October. They now manage a swank
recording studio in West Oakland. Goapele's brother, Namane Mohlabane,
is partnering with San Francisco club owner Michael O'Connor to open a
new live music venue on San Pablo Avenue, in the building that once
housed Sweet Jimmie's. At a time of mass bloodletting in the record
industry, Skyblaze seems inured to the effects of a bad economy and the
move to digital. Goapele Inc. always finds ways to work within, but
also get around the system.

Granted, the singer didn't always have a pool of money and resources
to shore up her career. She came from a family of modest means. Born in
Oakland to a Jewish mother and South African father, she spent her
childhood moving throughout Oakland and Berkeley. Her mother co-owned a
boutique and cultural center on 40th and Telegraph called the Urban
Village, which, Goapele says, was where she became "a passionate
shopper." Her older brother Namane was a DJ associated with the popular
crew Local 1200. As teens, they did community activism with the youth
group EYES (Empowered Youth Educating Society), which led social
justice workshops in local high schools. Goapele honed her chops
singing in Oakland Youth Chorus and making cameos at Local 1200 shows,
where she would croon over other people's instrumentals. She sang her
first local hit, "Childhood Drama," over the Super Cat song "Dolly My
Baby" (a dancehall track based on a Headhunters sample). Even at that
time she had a sound unlike most other vocalists, influenced both by
classic soul and by the Miriam Makeba records that she listened to as a
kid.

A few interesting twists of fortune led to Goapele's rise. She spent
two years at the Berklee College of Music, where she sang in a James
Brown ensemble that also featured keyboardist Jeff Bhasker, who would
later become one of her producers. (He's the current music director for
Kanye West and shaped many of the songs on West's last album, 808s
and Heartbreak). When Goapele returned home in 2000, she'd already
completed much of the work for Closer. Over the next couple
years she would create a well-oiled marketing machine with the help of
Namane and Local 1200 graphic designer Theo Rodrigues. They teamed up
to put out Closer in 2001, made their own posters and organized
street teams to promote Goapele's shows. At that point Namane became
Goapele's official manager. He worked for City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel
by day and spent his nights DJing and advancing his sister's career.
That year Lee Hildebrand wrote the first profile of Goapele in the
East Bay Express, after he heard the album was moving units at
Amoeba.

Two things distinguished Closer from other local albums and
caused it to generate an instant cult of fandom. One was its musical
sophistication. The title track — made by keyboardist Michael
Aaberg and DJ Amp Live — combines modal chord progression with
simple drum kicks. The strangeness and edginess of the chords make a
neat counterpoint to Goapele's fragile vocals. The antiwar track "Red,
White, & Blues" includes a protracted, Hendrix-style guitar solo by
Errol Cooney, blurred out by drum patterns meant to sound like choppers
flying overhead. Her ballad "Romantic" with organ trio Soulive, harks
back to an older, more low-down style of funk music; Soulive guitarist
Eric Krasno uses a talk box to modulate the chords. All told, it was
accessible as a pop album, but the songwriting was more studied and
considered than what you'd hear on the radio at that time (or today,
for that matter). The music hit pretty hard.

The other thing that Closer had going for it was extremely
careful marketing, which would become a major hallmark of the singer's
career. Once Team Goapele had sold about a thousand records, they began
what Namane describes as "probably the most patient radio campaign in
the history of radio campaigns." DJs were already starting to play
"Childhood Drama" in clubs. (It ended up getting released as the B-side
single, with "Closer" as the A-side.) Goapele had been featured in all
the local periodicals and on indie radio stations like KPFA and KPOO.
She performed around town just often enough to remain a hit (if you
headline the neighborhood clubs more than a few times a year you're
condemned to be a "local artist," her brother explained) and had
concise, well-put-together shows that never dragged on. Through his DJ
career Namane had kept in touch with all the main on-air personalities
at KMEL — Chuy Gomez, Big Von, Mind Motion, Rick Lee — and
he began courting them as Goapele's career picked up momentum. "I was
in conversations with all of them. I didn't really understand the
politics of radio," Namane recalled. "A lot of these people were aware
of what we were doing, so when it did come to them having a mixers'
meeting and the song was presented, the DJs were familiar." Within a
few months, "Closer" was getting played on KMEL about three times a
week.

Readers also liked…

White Oakland residents are increasingly using the popular social networking site to report "suspicious activity" about their Black neighbors — and families of color fear the consequences could be fatal.